The problem is not that LINQ can't do this, it's specifically LINQ to Entities. So what you need to do instead is a 2-step process. First, take the data out of LINQ to Entities. Then, deal with the data in LINQ. How do you do this? By using .ToList() to process the query in LINQ to Entities and using a second query to get it into the class.

Ideally, I'd like to get all this stuff out of ASP.Net and use jQuery templates instead, but that would be more legacy code converting than I have time for these days. So for now, this will be the solution I use.